


Wit Beyond Measure

by Antosha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Department of Mysteries, Depression, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy References, Hogwarts Forbidden Forest, Horcruxes, Loneliness, Magizoologist Luna Lovegood, Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter), Past Character Death, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Ravenclaw Luna Lovegood, Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem, Someone to Love References, The Deathly Hallows, Tom Riddle's Ghost, Unspeakable Luna Lovegood, Veil of Death (Harry Potter), We are born alone, we die alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24496687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antosha/pseuds/Antosha
Summary: We are born alone.
Kudos: 1





	Wit Beyond Measure

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LJ luna_exchange — for someone who dropped out.
> 
> Warnings: DH-compliant. Ghost-storiness. Character death.
> 
> Thanks to aberforths_rug for the beta—and for telling me I wasn't long-winded enough for a change!

Luna had never been alone in the Tower before. Her father—or, earlier, her mother—had always been there to fill their home with light and love and loveliness, to keep loneliness, always a close companion of Luna’s, at bay.

Today, however, the place was achingly, crushingly empty.

Luna sighed as she sat in the kitchen chair that had been her father’s favorite spot in the whole house. From here, she could see the late winter sky brightening as the sun began it’s pale descent. She could look up the stairs and see a bit of his recreation of Ravenclaw’s diadem, and, above it, of the brightly colored ceiling of her old bedroom. She did not find any pleasure or reassurance in those faces just now. True, Harry had lost both of his parents, and Neville had all but done so, but they were each far from alone at the moment, and that made them poor company for Luna.

They had been at the funeral, of course, all of them trying very hard to comfort her in spite of her assurances that she would be fine. Harry, at least, had finally recognized her need and had ushered them all away, once they had extracted a promise from her that she would call at least one of them the next morning.

Luna knew death better than most of her peers, had grown up with it. Possibly the only one of her friends who was on anything like as comfortable a standing with what Professor Dumbledore had called ‘the next great adventure’ was Harry, and though he had experienced it on a level that she had not—that, in fact, very few people had—he was less given to introspection than she. Luna knew death, had lived with it most of her life, had considered it at length and in depth from many angles, and considered herself to be quite comfortable with it as merely a part of life. Unnecessary death she mourned, but death in and of itself, no. Watching her mother die slowly and painfully in her workroom had taught Luna a certain level of detachment and equanimity about the idea of mortality, and it was an equanimity that she had always sought to understand and to reinforce as she had grown older.

And yet her father’s death had, for whatever reason, shaken her far more than it should have. Looked at with a level head—and Luna usually prided herself on her level-headedness—Xenophilius Lovegood had been far from young; he had been close to a century old when he had married Luna’s mother, and the past years, from his wife’s death to Luna’s abduction to his own trip to Azkaban, had been very hard on him.

And yet he was the sole constant in her life: the North Star to her peripatetic existence. The idea that he could simply have _failed_ while she was caught up in her studies of exotic creatures down in the Department of Mysteries seemed incredible. Impossible. That he could simply have _died_ was…

Unbelievable.

Luna Lovegood had spent her whole life committing herself to believing in things that most other witches and wizards found at the very least difficult to swallow. And yet, dirigible plums at her ears or no, the fact that she had herself interred her father’s body that afternoon or no, she found herself sitting at that table, sipping Gurdyroot tea, and expecting to hear him clattering down the stairs with some new piece of evidence in the existence of the elusive Snorkack.

Of course she did not truly expect this, but somehow that seemed every bit as real a possibility as the idea that he would never do so again, and, she realized, she needed it. Needed him to come down, talking about the great migration patterns of the Snorkack herds and the dangers of the Rotfang Conspiracy, and explaining the precise way in which it could be possible that he, himself, should have died.

Of course, he did not do so.

At some point, she became aware that the tea was growing cold and bitter, and that her cheeks were beginning to sting from the steady flow of her tears. The sun had dipped quickly to the horizon and given its daily phoenix-flame farewell. The kitchen was beginning to darken.

 _Sleep_ , Luna thought, blinking at the rapidly dimming room about her. _I should go to sleep. Mummy always said that everything always looked better after a good cry and a good night’s sleep._ She stood, muscles stiff, and shuffled towards the circular stair. She had tried to convince her father to change the stairs, had worried that he might fall and hurt himself, but he had only laughed and reminded her that a witch in Borneo had prophesied that he would die beneath a Puffskein. The witch had been right, as it happened. Not that the weight of the Puffskein had killed Luna’s father, but when old Roderick Couth had come to deliver ink, the wizard had found Xenophilius Lovegood dead in bed on the top floor, one of the Pygmy Puffs that had escaped from George Weasley’s customers over the years licking daintily at his nose.

On the first floor she found that she could not look at the printing press; it was too much a reminder of her father and who he had always been, even before he was her father or her mother’s husband: editor of _The Quibbler_. Instead, she turned and looked at the niche where the bust of Rowena Ravenclaw held his attempt to reproduce her famous diadem. The niche was obscure, and so Luna took out her wand and cast a quick _Lumos_. The headdress was there—he had puttered with it right up to the end, apparently, since there was now a set of mirrored eyepieces attached to the front.

What caught Luna’s eye, however, was a dark glint of silver on the crown of the bust’s head. Luna stepped forward. A piece of mangled jewelry lay there, silver indeed, but apparently burnt and twisted…

Reaching out without a thought, she took it, knowing what it must be.

A barely legible inscription ran across the bottom of the piece, warped and grime-dark: _WIT BEYOND MEASU…._

Luna’s fingers closed around the remnant of the true diadem. Clearly her father had found it after the battle, this forlorn link to his dream, and had brought it here. For inspiration, perhaps. And for whatever reason, Luna clutched it tightly; cold and lifeless as it was, it seemed to give her situation a strange kind of reality, and she embraced it. Stumbling as new tears appeared, she made her way up to her old bed, threw herself down on it, and cried herself to sleep, staring not up at the bright, happy faces above, but at the twisted bit of metal in her hand, as if it and only it could give her relief.

  
  


~*~

  
  


_The Veil of Dis billowed before her, as always moved by a wind that Luna could not feel but knew was there. She moved closer, listening as always to the susurrations that seemed to call from beyond the arch, trying to hear—_

“ _I hear them too,” said a high, clear voice from somewhere in the room._

“ _They’re calling to me,” sighed Luna. It had been hard enough when there was only one voice to listen for through the archway, but now…_

“ _Yes,” said the disembodied voice. “But are you calling to **them**?”_

  
  


~*~

  
  


and she was halfway across the kitchen when the Floo popped and turned green, and Hermione called out, “Luna?”

Luna shook her head for a moment, and blinked at the hearth. “Yes, Hermione?”

“I just wanted to check in—we said we would, do you remember? How are you, Luna?” Hermione’s eyes were very wide and full of compassion, and honestly, Luna liked Hermione quite a lot, but right now she didn’t want to be looking at her friend. At Ron’s fiancée. “I’m fine, Hermione, thank you.”

“Good,” Hermione answered slowly, in a manner that suggested to Luna that perhaps she thought otherwise. “What…? Where are you going, Luna?”

Luna opened her mouth to answer, but couldn’t; she looked down and found to her surprise that she was in her Unspeakable robes. “I’m going to work,” she answered.

“I see. Are…?” Hermione shook her head and attempted a smile. “Well, I suppose keeping to your routine is helpful. And the work does need to get done, I’m sure.”

“Oh, yes,” Luna agreed. Ghosts wouldn’t move themselves, after all. “Thank you for calling, Hermione.”

“You’re welcome, Luna, of course.” Hermione started to pull her head back, but stopped and bit her lip before saying, “Luna? You know… If you need anything, anything at all, please, please, just call us. We’ll do anything for you.”

 _Will you bring me my parents back?_ Luna wondered, but did not ask.

When she arrived down on the ninth level a half an hour later, her project partner muttered, “Lovegood,” as if it were any other day, which was rather comforting.

“Algernon,” she sighed, hanging her muffler off of the back of her desk as always did.

“What’s that you have in your hand?” Algernon Tuljapurkar asked, always curious.

“My…?” Luna looked down and realized that the fragment of Ravenclaw’s diadem was still clasped tightly in her hand. She slipped it into a deep pocket in her robes. “Oh. Just a memento. Of my father’s.”

“Mmhhhhmmmm.” Algernon grumbled, grinding his teeth absent-mindedly. “Not going to be too distracted today, are you? Don’t want to poison ourselves.”

They had been working for almost a year to find a way to use poisons to encourage ghosts to stop haunting the spots they favored. It had been Luna’s idea, and it had seemed a good one at the time, but at the moment it seemed quite hopeless.

“Me? Distracted?” Luna asked, surprised. “Never.”

“Good,” he said, opening their sheaf of notes with a loud _thump_. “Good. Let’s see if we can finish up with the Basilisk venom trial today, shall we? Doubt if we’ll have any better results, but we need to finish the trial.”

“Of course,” Luna agreed, and reached for her dragonhide gloves.

That day, as usual, Luna joined most of the rest of the Unspeakables in the Death Room for lunch. It was the most open, congenial space in the department. Luna nibbled on her bacon and Plimpy sandwich and stared up at the archway. The Veil of Dis. A bit of the previous night’s dream came to her: a high voice. She found her hand grasping at the mangled bit of silver in her pocket.

_Are you calling them?_

Luna shook her head and laughed—not very loudly. No one ever laughed loudly in this room. It didn’t seem possible.

Everyone knew that that portal went in one direction only.

  
  


~*~

  
  


“ _Ah,” the high voice said, “you are more open-minded than that, my dear. I can see.”_

“ _But the Second Law of—”_

“ _Can that be Luna Lovegood saying such things?” said the voice, laughing. Somehow this laughter did not seem to fall leaden to the floor in this chamber as most laughs did. “Anything is possible. You know it to be so.”_

  
  


~*~

  
  


“—okay, Luna?”

Her head throbbed and there was a sharp pain against the base of her left thumb. The fragment of silver was clutched tightly there again. Luna blinked, looked up, and was surprised to find herself in the entry atrium of the Ministry, once again dressed for work.

“Luna?” Harry stood before her in his Auror’s robes; his face was bowed in concern, making him look rather like one of the Gernumbli having a not very nice day. “Are… Are you sleeping okay?”

“Oh, yes,” sighed Luna, rubbing her head. “Quite well.”

“Hmmm,” said Harry. “Well, take care of yourself, okay?”

“Oh, yes,” she murmured, but her mind was on the dream. She had had the dream again, in the Death Room. The voice had laughed. “Thank you, Harry.”

Through the day, Luna found herself thinking about the Veil. Thinking about the Arrow of Time. Time, Luna’s mother had always said, was an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.i

  
  


~*~

  
  


_Not the Veil, this time. A clearing in the forest, dark and moonlit, strung with strands of web thick as cables, and the clear, high voice whispered in Luna’s ear, making her shiver: “There is a way, Luna. The veil can be opened; it has. Lovely Luna. You know it. You’ve seen it. I can see that you know.”_

_The voice felt like feathers, and Luna tingled, looking around the clearing._

“ _Clever Luna. Clear-eyed Luna.”_

_Tremulous, ecstatic, Luna sighed, “Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.”_

  
  


~*~

  
  


“—next trial.” Algernon’s voice was prickly, the way it often got when things weren’t working.

“Hmmm?” Luna was shocked to find herself seated before her workstation. They seemed to have cleared the Basilisk venom experiments away.

“Lovegood?” snapped Algernon. Luna looked at him. His skin was the color of weak tea, and she had always thought that his face looked rather like a half-eaten apple that had been left upon a windowsill for several months. Pinched as it was now, the comparison seemed particularly apt. “What’s got into you? Is it this whole business with your father?”

“My father?” asked Luna, momentarily perplexed. “Oh. No, Algernon, I am fine, thank you. I was wondering whether we oughtn’t to try Acromantula venom.”

“Acromantula?” said Algernon Tuljapurkar, wrinkled face crumpling in thought. “Hmmmmm. Yes… Hard to find in the quality and quantity we’d need, but—”

“Oh,” said Luna, smiling for what felt like the first time in days, “I know where to find some.”

Luna used to Floo connection to Hogwarts. As she walked out the front doors, drifting through clumps of students who sped part her without giving her a moment’s thought, she heard a familiar voice call, “Luna!”

Turning, she saw Neville, whose robes seemed to be covered in some sort of sap; it was steaming in the chill air. “Hullo, Neville.”

“I tried to Floo you this morning, but you didn’t hear me. Walked right out the door.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ve been rather occupied, you know.”

“Well, yeah, of course, that’s what I figured. You been eating?”

“Eating?” In truth, Luna couldn’t remember whether she’d eaten since lunch the day before. She didn’t feel hungry so it hardly mattered. Still, it seemed odd for Neville to ask her that. “I’m fine, Neville.”

“Of course,” he said, holding his hands up placatingly. “So what brings you up here?”

“Oh, I have to go find something in the Forest.”

“The…?” His eyes widened. “You’re not going in there alone?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Neville,” Luna said, smiling, though she was feeling rather annoyed with him. “I’ll be fine.”

Neville started to say something, but pursed his lips instead and shook his head. “Okay. Okay. You are the Unspeakable, after all. Look, after, why don’t you join us for dinner? I know Professor Flitwick would love to see you.”

“How nice. I don’t know that I shall be able to, unfortunately. I must get my samples back to the Ministry. Perhaps another time.”

Neville’s face seemed to collapse, but he nodded. “Okay. Take care, okay?”

“Of course. Thank you, Neville,” Luna answered, and strode out past Hagrid’s cabin into the Forbidden Forest.

She found the place easily enough: the trail of webs and old egg sacks gave an experienced eye such as hers all of the direction it needed. The webs, however, looked old and untended, and when she reached the clearing, deep in the forest, she was disappointed to find it abandoned, but not surprised. “Oh, bother,” she said with a sigh. Luna was not one to worry overmuch about the efficient use of time; the walk had been lovely, and Luna had been delighted to see signs as she went that the Forest’s bowtruckle population was on the rise once again. Still, it seemed a shame to come all this way for nothing. Luna supposed that the spiders had found this a too-trafficked spot, and had decamped to a more secluded location. Perhaps Hagrid would know where they had gone.

As she turned, a thin shaft of sunlight glinted off of something buried among the leaves: gold. As in a dream, she stepped forward and plucked up an old ring that looked to have been abandoned there for years. And on its broken stone, a symbol that she knew all too well.

  
  


~*~

  
  


_Back before the Veil again, but not alone. “You have done well, Luna,” sighed the voice, and it was more than voice—Luna could feel breath upon her ear, had a sense of raven-black hair on her neck. “Clever Luna. Lovely Luna.”_

_The voice shot through her like pleasure, making her ache and tingle, both at the same time, and Luna shuddered. “The Stone. The Resurrection Stone.”_

“ _Yes. Yes, clever Luna. And tomorrow, at the Veil of Dis, I shall join you in truth. We shall be together.” A series of small explosions erupted up and down Luna’s spine—a sense of touch without touch, intimations of an intimacy so complete… “Would you like that, Luna?”_

“ _Oh, yes,” sighed Luna, and the almost-carress of fingers, of lips was more than arousing, and Luna knew that she needed the rest of that touch, needed that fulfillment, more than anything else in the world. It filled her senses so that she barely saw the Veil fluttering, barely heard the voices calling to her. “Yes.”_

“ _Then joined we shall be,” murmured the voice, and Luna was blinded by the light._

  
  


~*~

  
  


She woke the next morning without the sense of losing herself; today, she felt herself—more than herself, since she felt that presence, the beloved presence, near her, around her, and for the first time she knew why her friends could so abandon themselves to intimacy. She felt the promise of _completion_ almost palpably, and her pulse raced. She dressed and sped out of her family’s tower to the Apparition point, so consumed with the need to reach her goal that she barely acknowledged the two red-headed figures striding up the hill and calling her name. As soon as she reached the front gate, she turned and Disapparated.

Once she reached the Ministry she strode with rather more purpose than usual across the Atrium floor. As usual, Luna’s Unspeakable’s robes cleared the way for her; for some reason, on that particular morning this gave her a deep sense of satisfaction.

 _Soon,_ whispered the presence through all her senses, and its tone of anticipation sparked her own expectancy even further.

Luna Lovegood had spent all of her life alone. She had embraced loneliness and solitude out of necessity, but had always seen them as companions in their own right. Her so-called friends had never seen fit to look beyond Luna’s self-sufficiency, to see the craving, the desire, the all-consuming need for true companionship. And if the one being capable of easing her soul’s isolation lay on the far side of the Veil…

“Yes,” said the voice—and it was not a dream-voice now, or a _presence_. This voice, high and clear and powerful, alien and beautiful, had depth and timber. It _echoed_ in the echo-filled Death Chamber, and Luna turned away from the veil to see a handsome, black-haired man. “Yes, Luna. Call me back. Call the rest of me back, and we shall complete each other. You shall receive the consummation you so richly deserve.”

The memory of the previous night’s ecstasy reverberated through Luna’s nerve endings, and she gasped, nearly dropping the objects that she held so tightly in either hand. “Oh,” she said.

He smiled, and Luna blinked. He seemed substantial and yet… not. Not like the ghosts that she and Algernon had been working with. He was both more, and less. “You know what you must do, Luna, my treasure.”

“The ring,” she murmured, and shivered again as he nodded, coming closer. “The Resurrection Stone.”

“Yes, Luna. My lovely. My precious. Turn the ring three times and I shall join you in truth.”

She looked at him, her breath caught in her throat. His dark eyes seemed to swallow her, seemed to swallow everything, and it was only through an extraordinary act of will—and curiosity—that Luna refrained from obeying at once. “I always wondered why you hadn’t become a ghost,” she gasped.

He blinked, and the constriction on her chest eased.

“You seemed such a likely candidate,” she added. “Your fear of death was a classic indicator. And yet there have been no sightings of your spirit.”

The handsome face before her was still, nostrils flared. “I… was not sufficiently complete.”

“Ah,” Luna said, pleased to have understood at last. “The Horcruxes. You had fractured your soul too irrevocably.”

The dark eyes seemed to flash with reflected torchlight. “But with your help, I can be whole again.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding; again, comprehension came in gouts. “Here, where the wall between this world and the next is thin, with this stone, you could gather all of your shreds together once more.”

“Heal me, Luna,” he murmured, a quiet command rather than a plea. “Make me whole.” He was standing so close that, were he alive, she would have been able to feel his heat against her skin, yet there was nothing.

She squeezed the heat-twisted, heat-smoothed fragment of Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem in her right hand. “This bit of your fifth Horcrux; you followed it.”

Again he was still, and when he spoke it was in a strained whisper. “I did not know myself for a long time. When I was first aware, I was in the Tower.”

Luna could see it, could see the shattered spirit, haunting its shattered one-time vessel. “But you did not know about the Resurrection Stone.”

“No,” said Tom Riddle, his spectral arms circling Luna so that she could almost feel their embrace. “But your father did. He told me, and suddenly so much was clear. I knew what had happened to me: Potter was the Master of the Hallows, the Master of Death. And I knew what needed to be done, how I could fulfill my true destiny: by bringing the Hallows together myself. Turn the Stone. Turn the Stone, and when you have summoned my other selves from their exile, you will have made that possible, Luna my sweet, Luna my joy, Luna my—”

“I do not think so,” Luna said, and stepped back. Dark eyes blinked again, and for a moment flashed redder than any torchlight. “No.”

He was paler, now, and clearly angry; Luna knew that he could not touch her and yet she could feel his will, as powerful as any wand, filling her with its own imperative fire. _We will be together. You shall never be alone. I shall give you everything that you wish. Beautiful Luna. Brilliant Luna. Luna my—_

“I do not think so,” she repeated. “We are born alone. We live alone. We die alone. Only through love and friendship can we create the illusion that we are not alone.ii” An image of the ceiling that she had painted all those years ago flashed through her mind, brighter than the darkness oppressing. “The only true evil is refusing to see the truth. Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.” And before he could attempt to possess her again, she tossed the Resurrection Stone of Cadmus Peverell through the Veil of Dis and into oblivion.

“ _NOOOO!_ ” howled the splintered fragment of what had once been Voldemort’s spirit, its face contorting in rage. “ _I SHALL CONQUER DEATH! I SHALL—_ ”

Luna shuddered. “Even Harry, who does not have a particularly philosophical frame of mind, understood that the true Master of Death is the one who accepts it. The Hallows were only outward signs of a truth as old as life. And even they are gone now, all but one. The Stone is back in its proper domain, and Harry took care to break the Elder Wand before re-interring it with Professor Dumbledore. Death is merely death, you see, else where would the magic of living be? It is your time now.”

“ _NOOOO! I SHALL NOT! I CANNOT!_ ”

“You shall.” Staring at him for a moment, white with fear and rage, she almost relented before remembering where true mercy lay. “You already have. Goodbye, Tom Marvolo Riddle. And thank you for reminding me that I am no more alone than I ever was.”

Blood-red eyes flashed wide as she tossed the twisted bit of silver that was their last tie to the world of the living through the Veil and into the void beyond.

Some hours later, Luna was still there, weeping as she sat cross-legged at the foot of the archway, listening to the voices.

“Lovegood!” called Algernon, wheezing as he stumbled down the stone steps toward her. “There you are. What in the name of the forty-nine hells are you doing here?”

“Saying farewell,” she said, and smiled.

  
  


i Apparently, Luna’s mother was a fan of the late Douglas Adams. This statement appears in the eponymous first novel in his five (six?)-part Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe trilogy.

ii Orson Welles, as quoted by Henry Jaglom in Welles’s last film appearance, “Someone to Love.” Which I haven’t seen but hear is terrible. ;-)

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the original prompt—from an unknown drop-out:
>
>> Briefly describe what you want:
>> 
>> Ships: Luna with...Tom Riddle (preferable), Harry, Tonks, Hemrione, Cho, Charlie... or Luna in a threesome with Tom and Harry. I also wouldn't mind a gen fic about Luna and her father. :)
>> 
>> Setting: anywhere, but I usually like Hogwarts. Or a place they've never been before.
>> 
>> Basic plot: hmmm, anything. :-)
>> 
>> Tone of the fic: If it's a shippy fic, please make is romantic. :) Perhaps mysterious as well? I don't mind fluff as long as it's not too fluffy. I also love angst, especially if it's Harry or Tom angsting and Luna comes to their aid.
>> 
>> An element/line of dialogue/object you would like in your fic: Can Tom Riddle be in there? Perhaps in his diary, unharmed? XD But it's not necessary.
>> 
>> Preferred rating of the the fic you want: Any rating is fine :)
>> 
>> Canon or AU? Any, but slanting towards AU
>> 
>> Deal Breakers (what don't you want?): Anything with Draco or Ginny in it. Please no necrophilia, scat, golden showers, humiliation, or excessive bloodplay.
> 
> Well, covered at least some of it, didn't I? ;-)


End file.
